Islam Dabbas

Islam Dabbas did not start out fully convinced of nonviolence principles when he began participating in the first demonstrations of the Syrian revolution in March 2011. Angry at regime repression, the impatient 22-year-old unarmed protester from Daraya, a suburb of Damascus, wanted to shout insults about soldiers’ mothers.

Yahya Shurbaji, the 32-year-old nonviolence visionary of Daraya who has studied nonviolence since 1998, convinced young Islam to try the tactic called “fraternization” in nonviolence thought. Instead of yelling angrily, demonstrators would try to connect with the soldiers as scared young draftees far from their mothers.

Islam grasped this tactic’s effectiveness after he began making eye contact with soldiers.Islam Dabbas became one of the nonviolent resistance’s most avid proponents, bringing water bottles and flowers to soldiers even after his father Khairo Dabbas, age 52, was imprisoned on July 1, 2011.On July 22nd rally,he took the lead position at the front of the marchers, holding flowers to lay before soldiers. soldiers surrounded and captured Islam, with the flowers still in his hands.

Islam Dabbas’ conversion to nonviolent tactics is a microcosm of the struggle inside the revolution over armed versus nonviolent means to a free Syria. He represents the disenfranchised youth who are the body of this revolution. Even before Hosni Mubarak was deposed in Egypt, Islam and other youth in Syria began dreaming of a Syria free of dictatorship. “They forced you older folks to clap for [former Syrian President] Hafez [al-Assad], and they forced us to clap for [current Syrian President] Bashar [al-Assad],” Islam said last February, “but I will not let them force my children to clap for little Hafez no matter the price I have to pay.”

Those hands that refused to clap any longer for this regime? They have since been burned under torture, according to released prisoners who shared space with Islam Dabbas. They heard the screams of this nonviolent activist, who once carried flower bouquets to soldiers.

Islam, a top-notch soccer player, should be a second-year architecture student at Damascus University today, or on a soccer field, instead of in prison. He studies English and Italian and dreams of continuing his education in Italy.

Given the “amnesty” granted in January to all those imprisoned during the revolution for what the regime considers the “crimes” of exercising freedom of speech and assembly, Islam Dabbas should have been released. Yet he remains imprisoned. In fact, of the city of Daraya’s 345 recorded prisoners of conscience, only two have been released since that amnesty.